A Carbon Bomb in the Heart of Europe: Will the EU biomass loophole give a lifeline to energy giant EPH’s coal power plants?

In the summer of 2022, wildfires raged across European forests “like a carbon bomb exploding”.1 But the carbon dioxide (CO2) released from these wildfires was the same gas, and only about 5% of the volume, as that which is released every year in Europe when forests are logged and burned in a power station. Despite this, the European Union’s (EU) Renewable Energy Directive (RED) considers energy produced from burning wood (“biomass”) as “carbon neutral” (as the trees might regrow), and allows Member States to support it both directly and indirectly, to the tune of at least 22 billion Euros in 2021.